The gendered divide of care work  

Last week, I was hanging out with my aunt, who was telling me how busy her friends were since becoming grandparents, ironically explaining that the man was even ‘helping out’ by hanging the laundry to dry. She then burst into laughter as I stood there surprised, not understanding what the joke was. My other aunt seemed to have got it, as she joined her in laughter, “Washing the dishes I can understand, but hanging out the laundry, no way!” In this case my aunts were the ‘Others’ my mother had made me aware of. My aunts had accepted this social, gendered division of roles as a fact. Not only had they internalized the idea that care work is a woman’s duty, they accepted this work to be outside of a man’s responsibility. 

But what could I expect? This norm is enshrined and directly protected in Tunisian family law where men are the head of the household. The law goes as far as to offer men the benefit of a tax reduction because of their designated ‘family’ role while women, who spend most of their time and money on daily family needs, get no such tax reduction. Gradually I understood that this ‘joke’ was not just a one-off family insight, it is a societal and a political issue.  

Unpaid care work amounts to billions of hours provided by women in their homes and communities, through caring for their children, the sick, elderly, and through domestic activities. What has been an unrecognized and undervalued norm in my family and many others across the world, is actually a legitimate form of work.